2006 07 07 – Lansberg, Mons Gruithuisen Gamma & Delta
Work has been keeping me from viewing recently. Please excuse more “blasts from the past”…this observation was done over four years ago and was my first attempt at white on black lunar sketching. A sketching friend of mine, Rich Handy, introduced this style to me. Sometimes it’s easier to sketch the highlights rather than the shadows.
2006 07 07
Lansberg/Gamma and DeltaWednesday night (Thursday for UT), was a practice session for imaging with my Rebel. I finally bought a t-ring adapter during a star party a few weeks ago and had some fun playing with the new toy. The guys in the DSLR forum are giving me some great pointers. Feels very strange entering that realm, but I have a feeling it will compliment the sketching well for my observations. Plus gives me yet another way to enjoy this hobby to the fullest!
It was then time to put the camera away and dig out my sketch kit. Paul, being the thoughtful husband that he is, bought Tom L’s binoviewers for me last month. Tom, if you’re reading this, I absolutely LOVE them! Wow! Thank you both so much!!! I’ve been having a lot of fun with black Strathmore paper and Conte’ crayons for my solar work, so with Rich in mind, I got up the nerve to try my first lunar sketch with this media. Lansberg and the surrounding craters were my main targets that night. I explored the terminator, tried to count craterlets in Plato, and admired Copernicus (and was tempted to try it again, as the last time I tried to sketch that beauty, my sketch was cut short and it was never completed).
Lansberg is from the Imbrian period and is about 41km. The central mountains stuck out like two eyeballs in a dark room and I was pleased to see some terracing. All the little craterlets around Lansberg belong to it with Kunowsky D being the exception to the NW. Reinhold is trying to slip into the scene to the NE, but got its toe stuck in the door. Montes Riphaeus was very dramatic, or at least compared to the rest of the scene in that area.
After a great day today, which included solar observing (boy, that sun feels great!), I set up with the binoviewers again tonight. Although seeing was poor, I went ahead and bumped up magnification with 8mm TV Plossls (love that EP so much, I had to get another one!). It was good enough to support the level of detail needed to observe domes. Had I wanted to jump into a few complex craters, I believe a 20mm would have been best. So, domes it was and why not a pair? Mons Gruithuisen Delta and Gamma were flagging me down and I just could not resist.
They are also from the Imbrian period and close to 20km each. Looking at VMA, Delta is classified as a mountain and Gamma is a dome. Rukl calls both of them a dome-like mountain massif. Hmm, let’s see what Chuck Wood has to say about them. Aha! He calls them domes, most likely formed of silicic volcanic rocks. For more reading on this, see The Modern Moon, page 37. I would love to be one of the geologists that Chuck suggests may someday bang on the domes with their rock hammers to see what they are made of.
It was a bit disappointing that I didn’t see the summit crater on Gamma, but there was an obvious darkened area on the western top portion of it. I loved buzzing around in the all the little dips and valleys to the north of it, though. The little raised line between Gamma and Gruithuisen K looked like a pea pod. Isn’t the lava covered floor beautiful in that region?
Sketches created scopeside with black Strathmore Artagain paper and white Conte’ crayons
PCW Memorial Observatory - Erika Rix 